Chapter 25 - Teresa

Ramón somewhat surprised Kate by marrying again, a couple of months
or so after the death of Doña Carlota. The new bride was a young
woman of about twenty-eight, called Teresa. There was a very quiet
civil wedding, and Ramón brought his new wife to Jamiltepec.

He had known her since she was a child, for she was the daughter of
the famous hacienda of Las Yemas, some twelve miles inland from
Jamiltepec. Don Tomás, her father, had been a staunch friend of
the Carrascos.

But Don Tomás had died a year ago, leaving the large, flourishing
tequila hacienda to his three children, to be administered by
Teresa. Teresa was the youngest. Her two brothers had reverted to
the usual wasteful, spendthrift, brutal Mexican way. Therefore Don
Tomás, in order to save the hacienda from their destructive hands,
had especially appointed Teresa administrador, and had got the
brothers' consent to this. After all, they were shiftless ne'er-
do-wells, and had never shown the slightest desire to help in the
rather burdensome business of managing a large tequila hacienda,
during their father's lifetime. Teresa had been the one. And
during her father's illness the whole charge had devolved on her,
while her brothers wasted themselves and their substance in the
squashy prostitution-living of Mexicans of their class, away in the
cities.

No sooner was the father dead, however, and Teresa in charge, than
home came the two brothers, big with their intention to be
hacendados. By simple brute force they ousted their sister, gave
orders over her head, jeered at her, and in crushing her united for
once with each other. They were putting her back into her place as
a woman - that is to say, back into a secluded sort of prostitution,
to which, in their eyes, women belonged.

But they were bullies, and, as bullies, cowards. And like so many
Mexicans of that class, soft and suicidal towards themselves. They
made friends with judges and generals. They rode about in
resplendent charro dress, and had motor-loads of rather doubtful
visitors.

Against their soft, sensuous brutality Teresa could do nothing, and
she knew it. They were all soft and sensual, or sensuous, handsome
in their way, open-handed, careless, but bullies, with no fear at
the middle of them.

'Make yourself desirable, and get a husband for yourself,' they
said to her.

In their eyes, her greatest crime was that she did not make herself
desirable to men of their sort. That she had never had a man, that
she was not married, made her almost repulsive to them. What was
woman for, but for loose, soft, prostitutional sex?

'Do you want to wear the trousers?' they jeered at her. 'No,
Señorita! Not while there are two men on the place, you are not
going to wear the trousers. No, Señorita! The trousers, the men
wear them. The women keep under their petticoats that which they
are women for.'

Teresa was used to these insults. But they made her soul burn.

'You, do you want to be an American woman?' they said to her. 'Go
off to America, then, and bob your hair and wear breeches. Buy a
ranch there, and get a husband to take your orders. Go!'

She went to her lawyers, but they held up their hands. And she
went to Ramón, whom she had known since she was a child.

It would have meant a hopeless and ruinous law-suit, to get the
brothers ejected from the hacienda. It would have meant the rapid
ruin of the estate. Ramón instead asked Teresa to marry him, and
he carefully arranged her dowry, so that she should always have her
own provision.

'It is a country where men despise sex, and live for it,' said
Ramón. 'Which is just suicide.'

Ramón came with his wife, to see Kate. Teresa was rather small,
pale, with a lot of loose black hair and big, wide black eyes. Yet
in her quiet bearing and her well-closed mouth there was an air of
independence and authority. She had suffered great humiliation at
the hands of her brothers, there was still a certain wanness round
her eyes, the remains of tears of anger and helpless indignation,
and the bitterness of insulted sex. But now she loved Ramón with a
wild, virgin loyalty. That, too, was evident. He had saved her
sex from the insult, restored it to her in its pride and its
beauty. And in return, she felt an almost fierce reverence for
him.

But with Kate she was shy and rather distant: a little afraid of
the travelled, experienced, rather assertive white-skinned woman,
the woman of the other race. She sat in Kate's salon in her simple
white dress with a black gauze rebozo, her brown hands motionless
in her lap, her dark neck erect, her dark, slender, well-shaped
cheek averted. She seemed, Kate thought, rather like a little
sempstress.

But Kate was reckoning without that strange quiescent power of
authority which Teresa also possessed, in her slight, dark body.
And without the black, flashing glances which rested on her from
time to time, from Teresa's eyes, full of searching fierceness and
fiery misgiving. A fiery soul, in such a demure, slight, dark
body. Sometimes a muted word came from her mouth, and a
constrained smile moved her lips. But her burning eyes never
changed. She did not even look at Ramón.

'How much do you charge per word, Chica?' he asked her, with a sort
of soft fondness.

Then her dark eyes flashed at him, and her mouth gave a little
smile. It was evident she was hopelessly in love with him, in a
sort of trance or muse of love. And she maintained such a cold
sort of blankness towards Kate.

'She despises me,' thought Kate, 'because I can't be in love as she
is.'

And for one second Kate envied Teresa. The next second, she
despised her. 'The harem type - '

Well, it was Ramón's nature to be a sort of Sultan. He looked very
handsome in his white clothes, very serene and pasha-like in his
assurance, yet at the same time, soft, pleasant, something boyish
also in his physical well-being. In his soft yet rather pasha-like
way, he was mixing a cocktail of gin and vermouth and lime. Teresa
watched him from the corner of her eye. And at the same time, she
watched Kate, the potential enemy, the woman who talked with men on
their own plane.

Kate rose to get spoons. At the same moment, he stepped back from
the low table where he was squeezing a lime, so that he came into
slight collision with her. And Kate noticed again how quick and
subtle was his physical evasion of her, the soft, almost liquid,
hot quickness of sliding out of contact with her. His natural
voluptuousness avoided her as a flame leans away from a draught.

She flushed slightly. And Teresa saw the quick flush under the
fair, warm-white skin, the leap of yellow light, almost like anger,
into Kate's grey-hazel eyes. The moment of evasion of two
different blood-streams.

And Teresa rose and went to Ramón's side, bending over and looking
in the tumblers, asking, with that curious affected childishness of
dark women:

'What do you put in?'

'Look!' said Ramón. And with the same curious male childishness of
dark men, he was explaining the cocktail to her, giving her a
little gin in a spoon, to taste.

'It is an impure tequila,' she said naïvely.

'At eight pesos a bottle?' he laughed.

'So much! It is much!'

She looked into his eyes for a second, and saw all his face go
darker, warmer, as if his flesh were fusing soft towards her. Her
small head poised the prouder. She had got him back.

'Harem tricks!' said Kate to herself. And she was somewhat
impatient, seeing the big, portentous Ramón enveloped in the toils
of this little dark thing. She resented being made so conscious of
his physical presence, his full, male body inside his thin white
clothes, the strong, yet soft shoulders, the full, rich male
thighs. It was as if she herself, also, being in the presence of
this Sultan, should succumb as part of the harem.

What a curious will the little dark woman had! What a subtle
female power inside her rather skinny body! She had the power to
make him into a big, golden full glory of a man. Whilst she
herself became almost inconspicuous, save for her big black eyes
lit with a tigerish power.

Kate watched in wonder. She herself had known men who made her
feel a queen, who made her feel as if the sky rested on her bosom
and her head was among the stars. She knew what it was to rise
grander and grander, till she filled the universe with her
womanhood.

Now she saw the opposite taking place. This little bit of a black-
eyed woman had an almost uncanny power to make Ramón great and
gorgeous in the flesh, whilst she herself became inconspicuous,
almost INVISIBLE, save for her great black eyes. Like a sultan, he
was, like a full golden fruit in the sun, with a strange and
magnificent presence, glamour. And then, by some mysterious power
in her dark little body, the skinny Teresa held him most
completely.

And this was what Ramón wanted. And it made Kate angry, angry.
The big, fluid male, gleaming, was somewhat repulsive to her. And
the tense little female with her pale-dark face, wan under her
great, intense, black eyes, having all her female being tense in an
effort to exalt this big glistening man, this enraged Kate. She
could not bear the glistening smile in Ramón's dark eyes, a sort of
pasha satisfaction. And she could not bear the erect, tense little
figure of the dark woman, using her power in this way.

This hidden, secretive power of the dark female! Kate called it
harem, and self-prostitution. But was it? Yes, surely it was the
SLAVE approach. Surely she wanted nothing but sex from him, like a
prostitute! The ancient mystery of the female power, which
consists in glorifying the blood-male.

Was it right? Kate asked herself. Wasn't it degrading for a
woman? And didn't it make the man either soft and sensuous, or
else hatefully autocratic?

Yet Kate herself had convinced herself of one thing, finally: that
the clue to all living and to all moving-on into new living lay in
the vivid blood-relation between man and woman. A man and a woman
in this togetherness were the clue to all present living and future
possibility. Out of this clue of togetherness between a man and a
woman, the whole of the new life arose. It was the quick of the
whole.

And the togetherness needed a balance. Surely it needed a balance!
And did not this Teresa throw herself entirely into the male
balance, so that all the weight was on the man's side?

Ramón had not wanted Kate. Ramón had got what he wanted - this
black little creature, who was so servile to him and so haughty in
her own power. Ramón had never wanted Kate: except as a friend, a
clever friend. As a woman, no! - He wanted this little viper of a
Teresa.

Cipriano wanted Kate. The little general, the strutting little
soldier, he wanted Kate: just for moments. He did not really want
to marry her. He wanted the moments, no more. She was to give him
his moments, and then he was off again, to his army, to his men.
It was what he wanted.

It was what she wanted too. Her life was her own! It was not her
métier to be fanning the blood in a man, to make him almighty and
blood-glamorous. Her life was her own!

She rose and went to her bedroom to look for a book she had
promised Ramón. She could not bear the sight of him in love with
Teresa any longer. The heavy, mindless smile on his face, the
curious glisten of his eyes, and the strange, heavy, lordly APLOMB
of his body affected her like a madness. She wanted to run.

This was what they were, these people! Savages, with the
impossible fluid flesh of savages, and that savage way of
dissolving into an awful black mass of desire. Emerging with the
male conceit and haughtiness swelling his blood and making him feel
endless. While his eyes glistened with a haughty blackness.

The trouble was, that the power of the world, which she had known
until now only in the eyes of blue-eyed men, who made queens of
their women - even if they hated them for it in the end - was now
fading in the blue eyes, and dawning in the black. In Ramón's eyes
at this moment was a steady, alien gleam of pride, and daring, and
power, which she knew was masterly. The same was in Cipriano's
quick looks. The power of the world was dying in the blond men,
their bravery and their supremacy was leaving them, going into the
eyes of the dark men, who were rousing at last.

Joachim, the eager, clever, fierce, sensitive genius, who could
look into her soul, and laugh into her soul, with his blue eyes: he
had died under her eyes. And her children were not even his
children.

If she could have fanned his blood as Teresa now fanned the blood
of Ramón, he would never have died.

But it was impossible. Every dog has his day. - And every race.

Teresa came tapping timidly.

'May I come?'

'Do!' said Kate, rising from her knees and leaving little piles of
books all round the book-trunk.

It was a fairly large room, with doors opening on to the patio and
the sun-hard garden, smooth mango-trees rising like elephant's
trunks out of the ground, green grass after the rains, chickens
beneath the ragged banana leaves. A red bird splashed in the basin
of water, opening and shutting brown wings above his pure scarlet,
vivid.

But Teresa looked at the room, not out of doors. She smelt the
smell of cigarettes and saw the many cigarette stumps in the agate
tray by the bed. She saw the littered books, the scattered
jewellery, the brilliant New-Mexican rugs on the floor, the Persian
curtain hung behind the bed, the handsome, coloured bedcover, the
dresses of dark silk and bright velvet flung over a trunk, the
folded shawls with their long fringe, the scattered shoes, white,
grey, pale-brown, dark-brown, black, on the floor, the tall Chinese
candlesticks. The room of a woman who lived her own life, for her
own self.

Teresa was repelled, uneasy, and fascinated.

'How nice this is!' she said, touching the glowing bedcover.

'A friend made it for me, in England.'

Teresa looked with wonder at everything, especially at the tangle
of jewellery on the dressing-table.

'Don't you like those red stones!' said Kate, kneeling again to put
the books back, and looking at the brown neck bent absorbedly over
the jewels. Thin shoulders, with a soft, dark skin, in a bit of a
white dress! And loosely folded masses of black hair held by
tortoise-shell pins. - An insignificant little thing, humble, Kate
thought to herself.

But she knew really that Teresa was neither insignificant nor
humble. Under that soft brown skin, and in that stooping female
spine was a strange old power to call up the blood in a man, and
glorify it, and, in some way, keep it for herself.

On the sewing-table was a length of fine Indian muslin which Kate
had bought in India, and did not know what to do with. It was a
sort of yellow-peach colour, beautiful, but it did not suit Kate.
Teresa was fingering the gold-thread selvedge.

'It is not organdie?' she said.

'No, muslin. Hand-made muslin from India. - Why don't you take it?
It doesn't suit me. It would be perfect for you.'

She rose and held the fabric against Teresa's dark neck, pointing
to the mirror. Teresa saw the warm-yellow muslin upon herself, and
her eyes flashed.

'No!' she said. 'I couldn't take it.'

'Why not? It doesn't suit me. I've had it lying about for a year
now, and was wondering whether to cut it up for curtains. Do have
it.'

Kate could be imperious, almost cruel in her giving.

'I can't take it from you!'

'Of course you can!'

Ramón appeared in the doorway, glancing round the room, and at the
two women.

'Look!' said Teresa, rather confused. 'The Señora wants to give me
this Indian muslin.' - She turned to him shyly, with the fabric held
to her throat.

'You look very well in it,' he said, his eyes resting on her.

'The Señora ought not to give it to me.'

'The Señora would not give it you unless she wished to.'

'Then!' said Teresa to Kate. 'Many thanks! But many thanks!'

'It is nothing,' said Kate.

'But Ramón says it suits me.'

'Yes, doesn't it suit her!' cried Kate to him. 'It was made in
India for someone as dark as she is. It DOES suit her.'

'Very pretty!' said Ramón.

He had glanced round the room, at the different attractive things
from different parts of the world, and at the cigarette ends in the
agate bowl: the rather weary luxury and disorder, and the touch of
barrenness, of a woman living her own life.

She did not know what he was thinking. But to herself she thought:
This is the man I defended on that roof. This is the man who lay
with a hole in his back, naked and unconscious under the lamp. He
didn't look like a Sultan then.

Teresa must have divined something of her thought, for she said,
looking at Ramón:

'Señora! But for you Ramón would have been killed. Always I think
of it.'

'Don't think of it,' said Kate. 'Something else would have
happened. Anyhow it wasn't I, it was destiny.'

'Ah, but you were the destiny!' said Teresa.

'Now there is a hostess, won't you come and stay some time at
Jamiltepec?' said Ramón.

'Oh, do! Do come!' cried Teresa.

'But do you really want me?' said Kate, incredulous.

'Yes! Yes!' cried Teresa.

'She needs a woman-friend,' said Ramón gently.

'Yes, I do!' she cried. 'I have never had a true, TRUE woman-
friend: only when I was at school, and we were girls.'

Kate doubted very much her own capacity for being a TRUE, true
woman-friend to Teresa. She wondered what the two of them saw in
her. As what did they see her?

'Yes, I should like to come for a few days,' she replied.

'Oh, yes!' cried Teresa. 'When will you come?'

The day was agreed.

'And we will write the Song of Malintzi,' said Ramón.

'Don't do that!' cried Kate quickly.

He looked at her, in his slow, wondering way. He could make her
feel, at moments, as if she were a sort of child and as if he were
a ghost.

Kate went to Jamiltepec, and before the two women knew it, almost,
they were making dresses for Teresa, cutting up the pineapple-
coloured muslin. Poor Teresa, for a bride she had a scanty
wardrobe: nothing but her rather pathetic black dresses that
somehow made her look poor, and a few old white dresses. She had
lived for her father - who had a good library of Mexicana and was
all his life writing a history of the State of Jalisco - and for the
hacienda. And it was her proud boast that Las Yemas was the only
hacienda, within a hundred miles range, which had not been smashed
at all during the revolutions that followed the flight of Porfirio
Diaz.

Teresa had a good deal of the nun in her. But that was because she
was deeply passionate, and deep passion tends to hide within
itself, rather than expose itself to vulgar contact.

So Kate pinned the muslin over the brown shoulders, wondering again
at the strange, uncanny softness of the dark skin, the heaviness of
the black hair. Teresa's family, the Romeros, had been in Mexico
since the early days of the Conquest.

Teresa wanted long sleeves.

'My arms are so thin!' she murmured, hiding her slender brown arms
with a sort of shame. 'They are not beautiful like yours.'

Kate was a strong, full-developed woman of forty, with round,
strong white arms.

'No!' she said to Teresa. 'Your arms are not thin: they are
exactly right for your figure, and pretty and young and brown.'

'But make the sleeves long, to the wrist,' pleaded Teresa.

And Kate did so, realizing it became the other woman's nature
better.

'The men here don't like little thin women,' said Teresa,
wistfully.

'One doesn't care what THE MEN like,' said Kate. 'Do you think Don
Ramón wishes you were a plump partridge?'

Teresa looked at her with a smile in her dark, big bright eyes,
that were so quick, and in many ways so unseeing.

'Who knows!' she said. And in her quick, mischievous smile it was
evident she would like also, sometimes, to be a plump partridge.

Kate now saw more of the hacienda life than she had done before.
When Ramón was at home, he consulted his overseer, or administrator,
every morning. But already Teresa was taking this work off his
hands. She would see to the estate.

Ramón was a good deal absent, either in Mexico City or in
Guadalajara, or even away in Sonora. He was already famous and
notorious throughout the country, his name was a name to conjure
with. But underneath the rather ready hero-worship of the
Mexicans, Kate somehow felt their latent grudging. Perhaps they
took more satisfaction in ultimately destroying their heroes, than
in temporarily raising them high. The real perfect moment was when
the hero was downed.

And to Kate, sceptic as she was, it seemed much more likely that
they were sharpening the machete to stick in Ramón's heart, when he
got a bit too big for them, than anything else. Though, to be
sure, there was Cipriano to reckon with. And Cipriano was a little
devil whom they quite rightly feared. And Cipriano, for once, was
faithful. He was, to himself, Huitzilopochtli, and to this he
would maintain a demonish faith. He was Huitzilopochtli, Ramón was
Quetzalcoatl. To Cipriano this was a plain and living fact. And
he kept his army keen as a knife. Even the President would not
care to run counter to Cipriano. And the President was a brave man
too.

'One day,' he said, 'we will put Quetzalcoatl in Puebla Cathedral,
and Huitzilopochtli in Mexico Cathedral and Malintzi in Guadalupe.
The day will come, Ramón.'

'We will see that it comes,' Ramón replied.

But Ramón and Montes suffered alike from the deep, devilish
animosity the country sent out in silence against them. It was the
same, whoever was in power, the Mexicans seemed to steam with
invisible, grudging hate, the hate of demons foiled in their own
souls, whose only motive is to foil everything, everybody, in the
everlasting hell of cramped frustration.

This was the dragon of Mexico, that Ramón had to fight. Montes,
the President, had it to fight the same. And it shattered his
health. Cipriano also had it up against him. But he succeeded
best. With his drums, with his dances round the fire, with his
soldiers kept keen as knives he drew real support from his men.
He grew stronger and more brilliant.

Ramón also, at home in his own district, felt the power flow into
him from his people. He was their chief, and by his effort and his
power he had almost overcome their ancient, fathomless resistance.
Almost he had AWED them back into the soft mystery of living, awed
them until the tension of their resistant, malevolent wills
relaxed. At home, he would feel his strength upon him.

But away from home, and particularly in the city of Mexico, he felt
himself bled, bled, bled by the subtle, hidden malevolence of the
Mexicans, and the ugly negation of the greedy, mechanical
foreigners, birds of prey forever alighting in the cosmopolitan
capital.

While Ramón was away, Kate stayed with Teresa. The two women had
this in common, that they felt it was better to stand faithfully
behind a really brave man, than to push forward into the ranks of
cheap and obtrusive women. And this united them. A certain deep,
ultimate faithfulness in each woman, to her own man who needed her
fidelity, kept Kate and Teresa kindred to one another.

The rainy season had almost passed, though throughout September and
even in October occasional heavy downpours fell. But the wonderful
Mexican autumn, like a strange, inverted spring, was upon the land.
The waste places bloomed with pink and white cosmos, the strange
wild trees flowered in a ghostly way, forests of small sunflowers
shone in the sun, the sky was a pure, pure blue, the floods of
sunshine lay tempered on the land, that in part was flooded with
water, from the heavy rains.

The lake was very full, strange and uneasy, and it had washed up a
bank of the wicked water-hyacinths along all its shores. The wild-
fowl were coming from the north, clouds of wild ducks like dust in
the high air, sprinkling the water like weeds. Many, many wild
fowl, grebe, cranes, and white gulls of the inland seas, so that
the northern mystery seemed to have blown so far south. There was
a smell of water in the land, and a sense of soothing. For Kate
firmly believed that part of the horror of the Mexican people came
from the unsoothed dryness of the land and the untempered crudity
of the flat-edged sunshine. If only there could be a softening of
water in the air, and a haze above trees, the unspoken and
unspeakable malevolence would die out of the human hearts.

Kate rode out often with Teresa to see the fields. The sugarcane
in the inner valley was vivid green, and rising tall, tall. The
peons were beginning to cut it with their sword-like machetes,
filling the bullock-wagons, to haul the cane to the factory in
Sayula. On the dry hill-slopes the spikey tequila plant - a sort of
maguey - flourished in its iron wickedness. Low wild cactuses put
forth rose-like blossoms, wonderful and beautiful for such sinister
plants. The beans were gathered from the bean-fields, some gourds
and squashes still sprawled their uncanny weight across the land.
Red chiles hung on withering plants, red tomatoes sank to the
earth. Some maize still reared its flags, there was still young
corn to eat on the cob. The banana crop was small, the children
came in with the little wild yellow tejocote apples, for making
preserves. Teresa was making preserves, even with the late figs
and peaches. On the trees, the ponderous mango-trees, some fruit
was again orange-yellow and ripe, but the most still hung in
strings, heavy and greenish and dropping like the testes of bulls.

It was autumn in Mexico, with wild duck on the waters, and hunters
with guns, and small wild doves in the trees. Autumn in Mexico,
and the coming of the dry season, with the sky going higher and
higher, pure pale blue, the sunset arriving with a strange flare of
crystal yellow light. With the coffee berries turning red on the
struggling bushes under the trees, and bougainvillea in the strong
light glowing with a glow of magenta colour so deep you could
plunge your arms deep in it. With a few humming-birds in the
sunshine, and the fish in the waters gone wild, and the flies, that
steamed black in the first rains, now passing away again.

Teresa attended to everything, and Kate helped. Whether it was a
sick peon in one of the little houses, or the hosts of bees from
the hives under the mangoes, or the yellow, yellow beeswax to be
made into little bowlfuls, or the preserves, or the garden, or the
calves, or the bit of butter and the little fresh cheeses made of
strands of curd, or the turkeys to be overlooked: she saw to it
along with Teresa. And she wondered at the steady, urgent,
efficient WILL which had to be exerted all the time. Everything
was kept going by a heavy exertion of will. If once the will of
the master broke, everything would break, and ruin would overtake
the place almost at once. No real relaxation, ever. Always the
sombre, insistent will.

Ramón arrived home one evening in November, from a long journey to
Sonora. He had come overland from Tepic, and twice had been
stopped by floods. The rains, so late, were very unusual. He was
tired and remote-seeming. Kate's heart stood still a moment as she
thought: He goes so remote, as if he might go away altogether into
death.

It was cloudy again, with lightning beating about on the horizons.
But all was very still. She said good-night early, and wandered
down her own side of the terrace, to the look-out at the end, which
looked on to the lake. Everything was dark, save for the
intermittent pallor of lightning.

And she was startled to see, in a gleam of lightning, Teresa
sitting with her back to the wall of the open terrace, Ramón lying
with his head in her lap, while she slowly pushed her fingers
through his thick black hair. They were as silent as the night.

Kate gave a startled murmur and said:

'I'm so sorry! I didn't know you were here.'

'I wanted to be under the sky!' said Ramón, heaving himself to
rise.

'Oh, DON'T move!' said Kate. 'It was stupid of me to come here.
You are tired.'

'Yes,' he said, sinking again. 'I am tired. These people make me
feel I have a hole in the middle of me. So I have come back to
Teresa.'

'Yes!' said Kate. 'One isn't the Living Quetzalcoatl for nothing.
Of course they eat holes in you. - Really, is it worth it? - To give
yourself to be eaten away by them.'

'It must be so,' he said. 'The change has to be made. And some
man has to make it. I sometimes wish it wasn't I.'

'So do I wish it. So does Teresa. One wonders if it isn't better
to be just a man,' said Kate.

But Teresa said nothing.

'One does what one must. And after all, one is always just a man,'
he said. 'And if one has wounds - à la guerre comme à la guerre!'

His voice came out of the darkness like a ghost.

'Ah!' sighed Kate. 'It makes one wonder what a man is, that he
must needs expose himself to the horrors of all the other people.'

There was silence for a moment.

'Man is a column of blood, with a voice in it,' he said. 'And when
the voice is still, and he is only a column of blood, he is
better.'

She went away to her room sadly, hearing the sound of infinite
exhaustion in his voice. As if he had a hole, a wound in the
middle of him. She could almost feel it, in her own bowels.

And if, with his efforts, he killed himself? - Then, she said,
Cipriano would come apart, and it would be all finished.

Ah, why should a man have to make these efforts on behalf of a
beastly, malevolent people who weren't worth it! Better let the
world come to an end, if that was what it wanted.

She thought of Teresa soothing him, soothing him and saying
nothing. And him like a great helpless, wounded thing! It was
rather horrible, really. Herself, she would have to expostulate,
she would have to try to prevent him. Why should men damage
themselves with this useless struggling and fighting, and then come
home to their women to be restored!

To Kate, the fight simply wasn't worth one wound. Let the beastly
world of man come to an end, if that was its destiny, as soon as
possible. Without lifting a finger to prevent it. - Live one's own
precious life, that was given but once, and let the rest go its own
hellish way.

She would have HAD to try to prevent Ramón from giving himself to
destruction this way. She was willing for him to be ten Living
Quetzalcoatls. But not to expose himself to the devilish
malevolence of people.

Yet he would do it. Even as Joachim had done. And Teresa, with
her silence and her infinitely soft administering, she would heal
him far better than Kate, with her expostulation and her
opposition.

'Ah!' said Kate to herself. 'I'm glad Cipriano is a soldier, and
doesn't get wounds in his SOUL.'

At the same time, she knew that without Ramón, Cipriano was just an
instrument, and not ultimately interesting to her.

In the morning, Teresa appeared alone to breakfast. She seemed
very calm, hiding her emotions in her odd, brown, proud little way.

'How is Ramón?' said Kate.

'He is sleeping,' said Teresa.

'Good! He seemed to me almost done up, last night.'

'Yes.' - The black eyes looked at Kate, wide with unshed tears and
courage, and a beautiful deep, remote light.

'I DON'T believe in a man's sacrificing himself in this way,' said
Kate. 'And I DON'T.'

Teresa still looked her full in the eyes.

'Ah!' she said. 'He doesn't sacrifice himself. He feels he must
do as he does. And if he must, I must help him.'

'But then you are sacrificing yourself to HIM, and I don't believe
in that either,' said Kate.

'Oh, no!' replied Teresa quickly, and a little flush burned in her
cheek, and her dark eyes flashed. 'I am not sacrificing myself to
Ramón. If I can give him - sleep - when he needs it - that is not
sacrifice. It is - ' She did not finish, but her eyes flashed, and
the flush burned darker.

'It is love, I know,' said Kate. 'But it exhausts you too.'

'It is not simply love,' flashed Teresa proudly. 'I might have
loved more than one man: many men are lovable. But Ramón! - My soul
is with Ramón.' - The tears rose to her eyes. 'I do not want to
talk about it,' she said, rising. 'But you must not touch me
there, and judge me.'

She hurried out of the room, leaving Kate somewhat dismayed. Kate
sighed, thinking of going home.

But in an hour Teresa appeared again, putting her cool, soft,
snake-like little hand on Kate's arm.

'I am sorry if I was rude,' she said.

'No,' said Kate. 'Apparently it is I who am wrong.'

'Yes, I think you are,' said Teresa. 'You think there is only
love. Love is only such a little bit.'

'And what is the rest?'

'How can I tell you if you do not know? - But do you think Ramón is
no more to me than a lover?'

'A husband!' said Kate.

'Ah!' Teresa put her head aside with an odd impatience. 'Those
little words! Those little words! Nor either a husband. - He is my
life.'

'Surely it is better for one to live one's own life!'

'No! It is like seed. It is no good till it is given. I know. I
kept my own life for a long time. As you keep it longer, it dies.
And I tried to give it to God. But I couldn't, quite. Then they
told me, if I married Ramón and had any part in the Quetzalcoatl
heresy, my soul would be damned. - But something made me know it was
not true. I even knew he needed my soul. - Ah, Señora - ' a subtle
smile came on Teresa's pale face - 'I have lost my soul to Ramón. -
What more can I say!'

'And what about his soul?'

'It comes home to me - HERE!' She put her hand over her womb.

Kate was silent for a time.

'And if he betrays you?' she said.

'Ah, Señora!' said Teresa. 'Ramón is not just a lover. He is a
brave man, and he doesn't betray his own blood. And it is his soul
that comes home to me. - And I would struggle to my last breath to
give him sleep, when he came home to me with his soul, and needed
it,' she flashed. Then she added, murmuring to herself: 'No,
thank God! I have not got a life of my own! I have been able to
give it to a man who is more than a man, as they say in their
Quetzalcoatl language. And now it needn't die inside me, like a
bird in a cage. - Oh, yes, Señora! If he goes to Sinaloa and the
west coast, my soul goes with him and takes part in it all. It
does not let him go alone. And he does not forget that he has my
soul with him. I know it. - No, Señora! You must not criticise me
or pity me.'

'Still!' said Kate. 'It still seems to me it would be better for
each one to keep her own soul, and be responsible for it.'

'If it were possible!' said Teresa. 'But you can no more keep your
own soul inside you for yourself, without its dying, than you can
keep the seed of your womb. Until a man gives you his seed, the
seed of your womb is nothing. And the man's seed is nothing to
him. - And until you give your soul to a man, and he takes it, your
soul is nothing to you. - And when a man has taken your whole soul. -
Ah, do not talk to me about betraying. A man only betrays because
he has been given A PART, and not the whole. And a woman only
betrays because only the part has been taken from her, and not the
whole. That is all about betrayal. I know. - But when the whole is
given, and taken, betrayal can't exist. What I am to Ramón, I am.
And what he is to me, he is. I do not care what he does. If he is
away from me, he does as he wishes. So long as he will always keep
safe what I am to him.'

Kate did not like having to learn lessons from this little waif of
a Teresa. Kate was a woman of the world, handsome and experienced.
She was accustomed to homage. Other women usually had a slight
fear of her, for she was powerful and ruthless in her own way.

Teresa also feared her a little, as a woman of the world. But as
an intrinsic woman, not at all. Trenched inside her own fierce and
proud little soul, Teresa looked on Kate as on one of those women
of the outside world, who make a very splendid show, but who are
not so sure of the real secret of womanhood, and the innermost
power. All Kate's handsome, ruthless female power was second-rate
to Teresa, compared with her own quiet, deep passion of connection
with Ramón.

Yes, Kate was accustomed to looking on other women as inferiors.
But the tables were suddenly turned. Even as, in her soul, she
knew Ramón to be a greater man than Cipriano, suddenly she had to
question herself, whether Teresa was not a greater woman than she.

Teresa! A greater woman than Kate? What a blow! Surely it was
impossible!

Yet there it was. Ramón had wanted to marry Teresa, not Kate. And
the flame of his marriage with Teresa she saw both in his eyes and
in Teresa's. A flame that was not in Kate's eyes.

Kate's marriage with Cipriano was curious and momentary. When
Cipriano was away, Kate was her old individual self. Only when
Cipriano was present, and then only sometimes, did the connection
overwhelm her.

When Teresa turned and looked at her with this certain flame,
touched with indignation, Kate quailed. Perhaps for the first time
in her life she quailed and felt abashed: repentant.

Kate even knew that Teresa felt a little repugnance for her: for
the foreign white woman who talked as cleverly as a man and who
never gave her soul: who did not believe in giving her soul. All
these well-dressed, beautiful women from America or England,
Europe, they all kept their souls for themselves, in a sort of
purse, as it were.

Teresa was determined that Kate should leave off treating her,
very, very indefinably, as an inferior. It was how all the foreign
women treated the Mexican women. Because the foreign women were
their own mistresses! They even tried to be condescending to
Ramón.

But Ramón! He could look at them and make them feel small, feel
really nothing, in spite of all their money and their experience
and their air of belonging to the ruling races. The ruling races!
Wait! Ramón was a challenge to all that. Let those rule who can.

'You did not sleep?' Teresa said to Kate.

'Not very well,' said Kate.

'No, you look as if you had not slept very well. - Under your eyes.'

Kate smoothed the skin under her eyes, querulously.

'One gets that look in Mexico,' she said. 'It's not an easy
country to keep your youth in. - You are looking well.'

'Yes, I am very well.'

Teresa had a new, soft bloom on her dark skin, something frail and
tender, which she did not want to have to defend against another
woman.

'I think I will go home now Ramón has come,' said Kate.

'Oh, why? Do you wish to?'

'I think I'd better.'

'Then I will go with you to Sayula. In the boat, no?'

Kate put her few things together. She had slept badly. The night
had been black, black, with something of horror in it. As when the
bandits had attacked Ramón. She could see the scar in his back, in
the night. And the drumming crash of falling water, menacing and
horrible, seemed to keep up for hours.

In her soul, Kate felt Teresa's contempt for her way of wifehood.

'I have been married too,' Kate had said. 'To a very exceptional
man, whom I LOVED.'

'Ah, yes!' said Teresa. 'And he died.'

'He wanted to die.'

'Ah, yes! He wanted to die.'

'I did my level best to prevent him from wearing himself out.'

'Ah, yes, to prevent him.'

'What else could I have done?' flashed Kate in anger.

'If you could have given him your life, he would not even have
wanted to die.'

'I DID give him my life. I loved him - oh, you will never know. -
But he didn't WANT my soul. He believed I should keep a soul of my
own.'

'Ah, yes, men are like that, when they are merely men. When a man
is WARM and brave - then he wants the woman to give him her soul,
and he keeps it in HIS womb, so he is more than a mere man, a
single man. I know it. I know where my soul is. It is in Ramón's
womb, the womb of a man, just as his seed is in my womb, the womb
of a woman. He is a man, and a column of blood. I am a woman, and
a valley of blood. I shall not contradict him. How can I? My
soul is inside him, and I am far from contradicting him when he is
trying with all his might to do something that HE knows about. He
won't die, and they won't kill him. No! The stream flows into him
from the heart of the world: and from me. - I tell you, because you
saved his life, and therefore we belong to the same thing, you and
I and he - and Cipriano. But you should not misjudge me. That
other way of women, where a woman keeps her own soul - ah, what is
it but weariness!'

'And the men?'

'Ah! if there are men whose souls are warm and brave, how they
comfort one's womb, Caterina!'

Kate hung her head, stubborn and angry at being put down from her
eminence. - The slave morale! she said to herself. The miserable
old trick of a woman living just for the sake of a man. Only
living to send her soul with him, inside his precious body. And to
carry his precious seed in her womb! Herself, apart from this,
nothing.

Kate wanted to make her indignation thorough, but she did not quite
succeed. Somewhere, secretly and angrily, she envied Teresa her
dark eyes with the flame in them and their savage assurance. She
envied her her serpent-delicate fingers. And above all, she envied
her, with repining, the comfort of a living man permanent in her
womb. And the secret, savage indomitable pride in her own
womanhood, that rose from this.

In the warm morning after the rain, the frogs were whirring
frantically. Across the lake, the mountains were blue black, and
little pieces of white, fluffy vapour wandered low across the
trees. Clouds were along the mountain-tops, making a level sky-
line of whitish softness the whole length of the range. On the
lonely, fawn-coloured water, one sail was blowing.

'It is like Europe - like the Tyrol to-day,' said Kate wistfully.

'Do you love Europe very much?' asked Teresa.

'Yes, I think I love it.'

'And must you go back to it?'

'I think so. Soon! To my mother and my children.'

'Do they want you very much?'

'Yes!' said Kate, rather hesitant. Then she added: 'Not VERY
much, really. But I want them.'

'What for? - I mean,' Teresa added, 'do you long for them?'

'Sometimes,' said Kate, the tears coming to her eyes.

The boat rowed on in silence.

'And Cipriano?' Teresa asked timidly.

'Ah!' said Kate shortly. 'He is such a stranger to me.'

Teresa was silent for some moments.

'I think a man is always a stranger to a woman,' said Teresa. 'Why
should it not be so?'

'But you,' said Kate, 'haven't any children.'

'Ramón has. - And he says: "I cast my bread upon the waters. It is
my children too. And if they return to me after many days, I shall
be glad." - Is it not the same for you?'

'Not quite!' said Kate. 'I am a woman, I am not a man.'

'I, if I have children,' said Teresa, 'I shall try to cast my bread
upon the waters, so my children come to me that way. I hope I
shall. I hope I shall not try to fish them out of life for myself,
with a net. I have a very great fear of love. It is so personal.
Let each bird fly with its own wings, and each fish swim its own
course. - Morning brings more than love. And I want to be true to
the morning.'